There’s a massive telescope on the drawing board that hasn’t even started construction yet, but when it’s finished in 2024, it’ll generate more data in a single day than the entire Internet.

For scientists to ensure they’ll be able to handle all that raw information, they need to start working on new computing technologies now. Fortunately, IBM is on it. The computing giant is collaborating with ASTRON (the Netherlands Institute of Radio Astronomy) to develop the next-generation computer tech needed to handle the colossal amount of data captured by the Square Kilometer Array (SKA), a new radio telescope that will spread sensing equipment over a span 3,000 kilometers wide, or about the width of the continental U.S.A.

The project is called DOME, and it’s challenged to find a way to capture and process approximately one exabyte every day, which works out to about twice the amount of data that’s generated every day by the World Wide Web, IBM says. To do that in a way that doesn’t consume a massive amount of energy, IBM will need to develop some entirely new processing architectures before construction on the telescope begins in 2017.

While the project has only just been announced, IBM already has some ideas in the hopper. Specifically, it’ll be looking at novel ways of stacking chips (today’s chips are flat, though stacking or “3D” tech is around the corner) and using optical technology for interconnects, something the company has already had some success with.

It’s possible the social networks and search engines of the future will be powered by IBM’s coming tech or something like it, enabling them to process an entire Internet’s worth of data for anyone and everyone.

According to International Business Times, beloved Texas Representative Lamar Smith is the author of a new bill that includes extreme surveillance provisions, and a name that will make opponents sound like criminals: H.R. 1981, or the ‘Protecting Children From Internet Pornographers Act of 2011.’

The new name has outraged many opponents of SOPA and other bills that could bring more government control to the internet, like PIPA and ACTA. It’s hard to imagine the whole world turning out against a bill with the words ‘protect’ and ‘children’ in the title, regardless of the actual contents of the bill.

So, what’s so dangerous about the bill? If it’s really designed to protect innocent children from pedophiles, why should anyone (other than pedophiles, of course) be worried about it? As David Seaman pointed out, H.R. 1981 contains some very hefty surveillance provisions, including one which would require ISPs to keep track of the IP addresses it assigns to its users, and to record that information for at least 18 months. Other information like credit card data and who knows what else would also be stored.

Adding insult to injury, the bill describes its target – in reality the entire internet – as ‘unregistered sex offenders.’ Once again, ouch. The scary part is that the bill could lead to monitoring of all internet activity, so that a subpoena can be issued for further investigation of the suspicious activity.

For those of us who aren’t worried about the government keeping track of our hopefully innocent browsing habits, there is the whole issue of your very private and very sensitive information being stored for years. The bill would leave such storage in the hands of ISPs.